Hello Wendy
I just wanted to add a bit to this thread for you and those who have also contributed .
I recently went to St Marylebone church to see the verger about another Rootschat thread.
The church has deposited all its birth, marriage and burials records (registers and day books) at the London Metropolitan Archives for safekeeping except for a typed copy of the list of recent (1980's) exhumations from the crypt to Brookwood. Those interred in the crypt would have been from fairly well-off families. The bodies had to be kept in an expensive lead-lined coffin to start with and the fees would have run into many pounds. The 1823 burial I was looking for cost £1 15s 4d (one pound, fifteen shillings and 4 pence) and was situated fairly close to the church wall at the altar end of the church. Other burials on the page cost 9 shillings and 10pence or 11 shillings and 10pence, burials from the workhouse cost a couple of shillings. There are plot references for most burials and these plots are dotted all around the churchyard.
The verger showed me documents from 1928 and the 1930's. During those times and again in the 1980's, many, many known and unknown bodies were exhumed and moved to Brookwood, the area around the Church has been developed and redeveloped over the years. Many new buildings have been built on what was the churchyard, many bodies however were not moved and are under what has been built on top. They are still building in the area. Recently another area has been excavated, and more bones moved, for an extension to St Marylebone Girls School which was built last year. What was the churchyard is now a garden.
A church and churchyard has been on the site in Marylebone for many hundreds of years and many thousands are buried there, not just the paying parishioners but those from the workhouse around the corner. The look-up I was involved in, was burial number 202 for 1823 and took place at then end of January! Last week I had to look through 850 marriages for 1816 and 830 for 1871. The number of baptisms on a daily basis runs into double figures. It's almost as if the church at St Marylebone was a 'people processing' factory for hatches, matches and despatches. Anyway, burials ceased there around 1855 after a change in the law and the establishment of cemeteries to take care of the dead for the area.
Now to the burial ground at St Johns Wood. This was opened in 1814 and closed in 1855. It is estimated 50,000 were buried there in that short time and records only survive for 1814-1818. I suppose the best way to conclude that your relative may be buried there is to go through all the other churches in the area and check their burial records leaving you with the suggestion that St Johns Wood burial ground is the the most likely final resting place.
In 1962 a survey of surviving headstones was made and a copy deposited at the Westminster City Archives but it is not indexed and runs to a lot of pages. Then in 1974 another survey was taken based on the 1962 survey and notes made: whether the stone was upright, broken or missing, those that survived were classified legible or illegible. This 1974 survey is indexed.
Parts of the burial ground here have also been turned into a garden but a parish church has also been built on top of it.
I'm still doing look-ups at the LMA and Westminster Archives (see my posts on the London & Middx boards), not quite weekly though as life has been conspiring against me. I'm happy to add the look-up requests to my lists and get back to you all when I can.
Dawn
